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I wonder, Toby, if the front office has learned its lesson. It will be interesting to see what happens the next time we have a GREAT player like Pedro at an older age, and what they do w/ him...obviously not many are great like Pedro...but the losing greatness versus losing goodness thing is a huge distinction that I think most of us, including those of us OK w/ letting go of Pedro at the time, have learned.

When Snyder was a junior in college there were a lot of whispers about a bum wing, whispers he pretty much proved true. Classic Royals mistake draft. He's a really big fellow, built wide and an honest 6-6. Once a hard thrower, now another guy who could've been something had he been born with better connective tissue in his limbs.

I'm still okay with letting Pedro walk, and with letting Damon walk, and pretty much with letting anyone walk who has been allowed to walk. When the front office exercises fiscal restraint I think it's done all right.

My problem with the FO is more in the nature of the free agent signings -- Wells, Clement, Renteria, Varitek all seemed to be overpays at the time as well as in retrospect. And I suspect that on average we've lost more in the trades we've made than we've gained. If we'd just held onto Hanley, Shoppach, Arroyo, Brian Roberts, and so on, wouldn't we be better off?

I'm still okay with letting Pedro walk, and with letting Damon walk, and pretty much with letting anyone walk who has been allowed to walk. When the front office exercises fiscal restraint I think it's done all right.

My problem with the FO is more in the nature of the free agent signings -- Wells, Clement, Renteria, Varitek all seemed to be overpays at the time as well as in retrospect.

The Pedro argument is that Wells/Clement/Renteria/Varitek is what you get when you exercise restraint with superstars - you get pretty good players. It's not that the front office made some big set of egregious errors in choosing which players to sign to 3/27 and 4/40 contracts during the 2004 offseason. Rather, it's that in a relatively shallow offseason, 3/27 and 4/40 contracts will go to players who don't really deserve them. If that's the case, and you have money that you have to spend, you should spend it on superstars even if they command larger contracts, and that's Pedro.

(I'm totally fine with letting Damon walk, same with Lowe and Mueller and Cabrera. Just not Pedro. You let the good players go, and you keep the great ones.)

But this is hardly the point. Kyle "El Pedrocito" Snyder should finally fill that gaping hole not only in the rotation, but in the hearts of Red Sox fans.

If we'd just held onto Hanley, Shoppach, Arroyo, Brian Roberts, and so on, wouldn't we be better off?

Who's in your rotation? You let Pedro walk, you didn't trade for Beckett, you didn't sign Wells or Clement. As best as I can tell, you've got Schilling, Arroyo, Lester, Snyder, Pauley. And that's to start the season, not at this point after inevitable injuries.

I would be quite put out if John Henry just pocketed another 17 gabillion dollars every year instead of reinvesting it in the roster. I just want him to reinvest it in great players whenever possible.

yes, I think I agree completely. What I would like is for this organization to take an approach under which we homegrow most of our players (like the successful small-budget teams) and then put out the wallet for established, premier players (as opposed to the premier-for-a-year Pavanos and Beltres). The moves that sicken me are the ones where we overpay for middling talent. For example, this past offseason, I would have been glad to overpay for BJ Ryan but not for AJ Burnett.

aren't we in first place? how much of an improvement would pedro give us over wells and clement and their replacements? 10 wins so far? 2+ runs of team ERA? i think most people wish we could have kept pedro NOW that he's doing what he's doing in shea stadium, but why should we assume that he automatically makes us a significantly better team than we have now. when the sox let pedro walk, i think most people around here just had faith that that was the right thing to do. AND, a few (if not more) said that they were happy the sox picked a value and stuck with it during pedro's negotiations. i think that people generally tend to overstate decline for older players and so a lot of people expected pedro to go to NY and benefit a little from shea, but why should we assume that pedro would be the same pitcher here that he is in new york? i think he'd probably be good, but maybe he'd be like beckett. despite the 2004 line, he didn't look great that year. he was fragile and watching him in close games was like watching isringhausen close games. every time he pitched it was "interesting." i still think it was the right thing to do.

i also think the replacement for pedro is NOT wells and clement. it's schilling. beckett replaces lowe or whoever was supposed to be the #2 starter. clement is #3 and so on. despite that, i think beckett's 2006 line will be a lot like pedro's 2004 line. and the sox 2006 line will probably look better than their 2005 line (despite their similarities thus far).

and as to arroyo, et al., let's just see how arroyo does after the all star break before we decide we'd be better off with him. no one expected him to pitch like he's pitching now, which suggests that it's probably a fluke and not his real talent level. and if it's a fluke, sure it'd be nice to have but it's not guaranteed.

People talk about keeping Pedro like it could have been done with a wave of some magic wand. The Mets outbid the Sox for him at least twice for him, and may well have done so again. I also think (just MHO) that the Sox would have had to do more than just match the Mets to get the deal done. That means you're paying somewhere north of 4/54. 4/60? 5/66?

I still don't think he'll hold up for that. I'm also not convinced that he'd be better than the 3.90 ERA guy he was with the Sox in 04.

As much as the results have been bad so far, I thought Clement was a good idea.

American League teams sigining pitchers with no balls who sometimes struggled with their control in the National League is never a good idea. That's not hindsight; you can dig up where I posted at the time that Clement would implode in the AL.

People talk about keeping Pedro like it could have been done with a wave of some magic wand. The Mets outbid the Sox for him at least twice for him, and may well have done so again. I also think (just MHO) that the Sox would have had to do more than just match the Mets to get the deal done. That means you're paying somewhere north of 4/54. 4/60? 5/66?

I still don't think he'll hold up for that. I'm also not convinced that he'd be better than the 3.90 ERA guy he was with the Sox in 04.

I respect you a lot. But I think every sentence here is complete hogwash.

aren't we in first place? how much of an improvement would pedro give us over wells and clement and their replacements? 10 wins so far? 2+ runs of team ERA?

Though this debate is, as above, moot due to Mecha-Pedro, I will note that there was a season last year. A season in which the Red Sox just barely failed to win the division, and then got swept out of the ALDS in part because their starting pitching imploded. So that's the thing I used to point to, BS, as evidence for the utility of keeping Pedro.

I don't really like a lot of the moves the Sox have done the last couple years, but variance has made them look worse than they were (I guess they're even now after Mueller/Ortiz).

Getting Renteria's 2005 season was just #### luck. Clement's Sox ERA is probably over 5 now and he looks pretty toast - there's no reason he couldn't have been a league average starter with a healthy arm instead. Don't get me started on Arroyo. They've probably gotten about what could be expected out of Varitek, Wells and the FLA deal.

Letting Pedro go was fine. Even if Pedro's healthy for the deal, the Mets will probably end up paying about market value for the marginal wins he provides. The 25% (or whatever) of the time he gets hurt and provides significantly less value than that has a massive effect on his expected value.

Though this debate is entirely MdtM-P, I would ask you about the logic of the second two paragraphs?

In the first, you argue that the expected median/average performance of guys like Renteria or Clement shows that the Sox got bad luck. In the second, you argue that the downside risk of Pedro shows he's had good luck. It seems to me that you haven't accounted for the downside risk of Renteria and especially Clement, and you haven't exactly discussed how much better Pedro's median/average projection was than Clement's. I totally disagree that Pedro's downside risk was greater than Clement's.

Further, I think that "luck" is not a very useful category here. There are so many factors of which we are ignorant that go into baseball decisions, and that greatly affect player projections. I hold baseball teams to a far higher standard than I hold internet people, because the teams have so much more information. When some players go to crap and fall short of their internet-determined median projection, I give some blame to the team that made the acquisition.

You should judge a move by weighing the estimated value a team gives up against the estimated value a team gets. It's pretty hard to estimate a player's future value, but you have to try (there's also the fact that the talent market is finite which makes things impossibly complicated)

They gave Renteria $40 million when he was worth maybe $30 million and only got $2 million (or whatever) of value from his one season. That's a bad deal that looks worse because of variance. Same thing with Clement.

The Mets signed Pedro to a bad deal that looks fair so far because of variance. That he's avoided the injury disaster and the Mets still aren't getting any sort of bargain is why the deal was bad. I'll grant that the deal might be reasonable in reality though because there wasn't a corresponding pitcher of Pedro's value that they could sign to a fair deal. But I have a hard time believing that not resigning him was any sort of blunder

I hold baseball teams to a far higher standard than I hold internet people, because the teams have so much more information. When some players go to crap and fall short of their internet-determined median projection

The Red Sox should be able to beat PECOTA if for no other reason than their knowledge of a player's health. Beyond that, I don't think their edge could possibly be very big.

If the Sox should be expected to be 10% smarter than PECOTA, well then they're never going to make nearly enough moves for us to know if they're falling below that standard. And that's without even factoring that they may knowingly sign bad contracts because of the market realities

Despite having watched one of the all time greats slip away, the front office can comfort themselves by knowing that they could probably lure another Pedro Martinez to Boston for a much more reasonable contract.

The 25% (or whatever) of the time he gets hurt and provides significantly less value than that has a massive effect on his expected value.

25% is a little out there. Since becoming a full time starter, Pedro has made at least 29 starts in 10 out of the last 12 years. The two exceptions were the strike-shortened 1994 season, and his injury in 2001.

He's averaged over 200 innings per year from 1995-2005, including the injury season. And lest we think his two highest IP seasons (1997 and 1998) are artificially muting the impact of his fragility on that average, it's worth pointing out that he's also averaged over 200 innings per year since the injury (2002-2005).

The Sox didn't exactly light out in pursuit of the healthiest pitchers in baseball once Pedro signed with the Mets, either. I suppose Clement was a durable dude (though now injured, of course), but Wells couldn't have been considered any more reliable than Pedro in the risk department.

Meanwhile, can we all agree that Rob and Rany are spot on in their tirades against the incompetence of KC management. Snyder is a VERY usable spare part, and clearly good enough to stick around with the worst franchise in baseball.

I'm not sure what you think is hogwash. Do you think Pedro would have been much better than 3.90? His straight up league adjustment has to put him in the mid-3.00s. I'd say parks/defense/familiarity would take him the rest of the way. Maybe 3.60s instead?

Do you think the Sox could have gotten Pedro cheaper than the Mets did? Same price? When Pedro's option got picked up and he immediately announced that the team would receive no 'hometown discount,' I took that as a sign that he was going to the highest bidder. His comments since signing indicate to me that, if money was equal, he still would have wanted to leave.

These are all opinions, of course, so I can see how you might not see how right I am.

Snyder looked pretty good to me last night. Maybe he's something. He sure looks like Arroyo.

Just an observation... When your payroll is North of 9 figures is it important if you are overpaying for a true superstar player? It's overpaying for ineptidue and mediocrity that kills a team not overpaying for high level performance!

I also wouldn't say that Boston exercised fiscal restraint with Pavano, the Yankees just threw more money at him.

The Mets signed Pedro to a bad deal that looks fair so far because of variance. That he's avoided the injury disaster and the Mets still aren't getting any sort of bargain is why the deal was bad. I'll grant that the deal might be reasonable in reality though because there wasn't a corresponding pitcher of Pedro's value that they could sign to a fair deal. But I have a hard time believing that not resigning him was any sort of blunder

I have never liked this kind of thinking, because it makes several assumptions that you just can't make. It assumes that there are lots of players out there available for a bargain price, and you should never pay a guy what he's worth.

Are the Mets better off having Pedro Martinez on the team or not having Pedro Martinez on the team?
Could they afford to pay him his contract?
Do they have an interest in being competitive?
Could they have taken the same money they spent on Pedro and gotten someone much better with it?

The answer to the first three of these questions is obvious, and even the fourth isn't hard to answer. The Red Sox pay roughly the same amount of money to Tek. They paid about the same amount to Renteria. I'd have taken Pedro.

BPro often criticizes free agent signings - there's rarely one they seem to like. But what are you going to do - not sign anyone if you can't get a bargain? You have to spend your money on someone. Otherwise, you're the Pirates.

I'm not sure what you think is hogwash. Do you think Pedro would have been much better than 3.90? His straight up league adjustment has to put him in the mid-3.00s. I'd say parks/defense/familiarity would take him the rest of the way. Maybe 3.60s instead?

Do you think the Sox could have gotten Pedro cheaper than the Mets did? Same price? When Pedro's option got picked up and he immediately announced that the team would receive no 'hometown discount,' I took that as a sign that he was going to the highest bidder. His comments since signing indicate to me that, if money was equal, he still would have wanted to leave.

It was me who called it hogwash, not JBH. I dont know why your baseline for Pedro's performance was his worst year in a decade. I guess just because it was his most recent, but I dont think you give enought weight to the 2.25's he slung in both '02 and '03. I think you could have expected anything from 2.50-3.50 ERA's for each year of his current contract. The 4th year of the contract wouldnt be too much of an overpay, assuming ongoing inflation of player salaries.

I also disagree with you assesment of the contract negotiations, but we'll probably never know.

I think I might shoot an angry email over to Jayson Stark for being such a smear-puppet.

Quotes from his article the week Pedro signed with the Mets:

We know because on Monday, he said yes to the New York Mets, to an offer of $50 million over four years that is as close to a definition of insanity in baseball as we have witnessed since -- what? -- the Mike Hampton contract?

I dont know why your baseline for Pedro's performance was his worst year in a decade. I guess just because it was his most recent, but I dont think you give enought weight to the 2.25's he slung in both '02 and '03.

That's a fair point. Any ZIPS-like projection would have put him much lower than 3.90. My feeling that the future would be more 3.90-ish was based partially on his drop in velocity.

I also disagree with you assesment of the contract negotiations, but we'll probably never know.

That's true. There's also the possibility that the Sox could have signed him before he ever became a FA, if they offered him 3/42 or 4/50 or something.

I also don't think we can say that the Red Sox problem was specifically that they didn't sign Pedro. Their problem was that they didn't sign good pitchers that were available. Millwood would have been a much better deal at 1/9 or whatever it was. They also would have gotten the draft picks from the Mets and a shorter commitment.

There is no projection system that can account for the bizarre episode of Pedro being brought in to pitch "garbage time" in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS and proceeding to turn garbage time into anxiety time. At that point I would have paid him to go away.

I don't blame Francona, because I'm pretty sure it wasn't his idea, and I can understand how he could have been talked into it. He was looking at the upside and discounted the downside. It was a calculated risk and it went bad. It wasn't a risk I would have taken, but keeping Pedro happy wasn't part of my job description at the time.

I don't blame Francona, because I'm pretty sure it wasn't his idea, and I can understand how he could have been talked into it.

This is reaching Homer Simpson proportions. I can also understand how someone would be talked into it, but that person should not be managing a major league team. If you're going to be talked into doing stupid things by your players, you're not doing your job.

I also think this might well have been Terry's idea, for a couple reasons. First, he may have thought it was a good way for Pedro to have the last laugh on the Yanks and thereby boost his confidence. Second, the Sox pitching was in a shambles coming into the game. He had probably told Pedro that he planned to use him for an inning. From what we know about Francona, he lives in mortal fear of not pitching someone he has planned to use. So he may have used Pedro just to stick to his plan.

Meanwhile, can we all agree that Rob and Rany are spot on in their tirades against the incompetence of KC management. Snyder is a VERY usable spare part, and clearly good enough to stick around with the worst franchise in baseball.

No.

I think it's more of an indictment of the Royals that players need to get out of that organization to have sucess. They've had too many years of poor coaching, develoment, training, scouting etc.

Even if Snyder wins 20 games for the Red Sox I'll stand firm that he'd never ammounted to anything with the Royals.

That's sorta why I see an X-factor when teams get pitchers from the Royals.

FOr instance, Jerremy Affeldt is terrible, but if the Mets traded for him, I wouldn't be surprised if he became an All-Star once he got actually coaching and scouting.

I'm really sorry I missed Snyder's start last night.

I bet he made lots of decent pitches to particular hitter's weaknesses that he never would have made with the Royals.

That's the value with Varitek and advanced scouting (which the Red Sox seem to be the best in the game at).

You know, even at 3.90 Pedro would be worth his contract.
an I think he'd probably beat especially with the improvements in the Red Sox defense.

Fiscal restraint is one thing, but the Sox only seemed to execute it with Pedro.

And Damon. And Pavano. And Lowe. And apparently Clemens.

Clemens?
and the Red Sox offered Pavano MORE than NYY.
I don't think the wanted Lowe or Damon back.

The big thing here really is that had they shown the man who had built their franchise a little more respect, and talked about an extension earlier in the 2004 season, or even in 2003 the Red Sox wouldn't have had to get into a bidding war with the Mets.

I've heard fans older and wiser than me talk about how the impossible dream Red Sox were the catalyst for the rabid RS fanbase in New England. How without 67 and 75 the team and it's fans would be more like the pre-strike phillies, instead of in a league with the yankees.
Well, I kinda think Pedro's like that, all the Pedro v. Yankees, post-Clemens stuff certainly increased the Sox's pressence, I doubt NESN would be as big as it is today w/o Pedro.

The big thing here really is that had they shown the man who had built their franchise a little more respect, and talked about an extension earlier in the 2004 season, or even in 2003 the Red Sox wouldn't have had to get into a bidding war with the Mets.

Well, they did pick up his option a full year earlier than they had to. That's showing respect, I think. And I thought they were negotiating an extension before the 04 season, they just didn't manage to get him signed.

From Pedro's comments since he left, it sounds to me like he was most upset that Schilling was getting a better deal and more respect than he was. I'm not sure the best way to handle that, but that may have helped to keep him.

First of all, it's supposed to be "To: Self; From: Toby." That's just plain funnier.

And second, I'm utterly humorless on the subject of Clemens leaving the Red Sox as well.

Am I wrong about Francona in this instance though? Is there any good reason, or even not-horrible reason to have Pedro pitching there? If there were any circumstance where you'd want your manager to stand up to a player and say no, wouldn't that be it?

I _love_ Pedro. I think that's obvious. But calling him "the man who had built their franchise" is a bit of a stretch. Though he is probably as responsible as any single player in the last, oh, ten years, maybe twenty, for the popularity of the team. Ortiz would be on that list, though he arrived late. And Clemens would be on that list if you go back 20 years. Also Nomar, Vaughn, maybe Boggs.

Anyway, the Pedro non-signing has been hashed out pretty thoroughly by now, hasn't it? I think it was a mistake, but not a totally unreasonable one. I tend to think that Pedro had one foot out of town, but I could certainly be wrong about that.

What's more interesting to me is analyzing the front office's moves more generally. Many of those moves must be analyzed together-- this last offseason, in particular, was a bundle of interconnected moves.

Those moves haven't been perfect, by any stretch, but overall I would give the FO a good grade-- one of the best in MLB, I suspect. In fact, perhaps an interesting way to evaluate those moves would be to compare them with the moves made by other teams. Obviously, KC is no match. But how does, say, Beane's or Ricciardi's work over the last few years compare with Epstein's? Kenny Williams? It's harder to compare, say, Byrnes or Minaya, since they haven't been on the job long. And, of course, each team operates in a slightly different context, with regard to payroll, existing farm system, etc. But the goals are the same, I think: to win championships, and, preferably, to do so in a manner that makes future championships a reasonable possibility. Who's the best at this? Is it still Beane?

I really like Theo as a GM, the Red Sox's 'system' under his watch has become one of the best in baseball (development, medical, scouting, etc etc etc).

But even his pre-2004 signings always seemed lucky.
I can't remember too many examples here, but I recall lots of 'failed moves', that would have left the Red Sox with worse players than they eventually put out on the field.

Edgar Alfonso being the first choice for second base in 2003, Theo pursuing the pre-white sox Contraras. Javy Vasquez being the first choice in winter 2003, and Schilling being the fallback.

I know there were some more, I 'm forgeting.

While he's still a damn good GM, I think Theo got lucky from 2002-2004, and now that luck has turned.

I think the answer to your question in 49. is your response in 48. That is, the reason to let Pedro pitch in that situation is to give the little prima donna the respect he claims he should be getting.

Game 7 had nothing to do with it. He was going to start Game 3 no matter what he did. FFS, it was his throw day, he just threw in an actual ballgame

Why was he going to start game 3 no matter what? He started game 5 on October 18th. If he doesnt pitch in game 7 he can start game 1 of the WS (October 23rd) on the normal 4 days of rest. I dont understand.

Why was he going to start game 3 no matter what? He started game 5 on October 18th. If he doesnt pitch in game 7 he can start game 1 of the WS (October 23rd) on the normal 4 days of rest. I dont understand.

Because the team had decided that in the likely event of very poor weather at Fenway, it would be preferable to start Pedro, who had been having trouble all season loosening up in cold weather, in the warmer climes of St. Louis.

Throwing 25 pitches on your throw day didn't affect their decision. 25 pitches is not a start.

Are you saying that if Pedro had NOT pitched in game 7, and its the day of Game 1 and the Sox have to choose between Tim Wakefield and Pedro Martinez, each with the exact same number of days off since last pitching, they would have chosen Wake because its a little chilly? I find that hard to believe. I think it was the combo of the weather-situation and #45 having gone in game 7 (throwing in an actual game is different than routine throw-day throwing).

This is very off topic, but I haven't seen an optimistic thread at all recently:

Remember when Curt Schilling was all "I'm healthy and I had a great April." And then he threw 133 pitches, and we were all "stupid Francona and Schilling" and he sucked for May. I like that I'm all, "oh man, he has a 7:1 K:BB ration and he's awesome again and he's thrown 100 innings so far this season."

I realize that I do this w/ the Sox, or have done this w/ them every year for about 4 years now. I get so fed up w/ them right about now and through July and then I rerealize that they have a pretty good team. This year, I think that the Pythag is BS given the front of the bullpen/back of the bullpen dichotomy.

Oh and despite Wily Mo Pena playing Center for awhile, the Red Sox are 15th in the league in DER, and I think that adjusted that probably puts them in the top 5 of the league given Fenway's BABIP bias.

What's the official BTF Party line on Starters coming in for short relief on their throw days?

Not like old school Japanese Baseball Masaichi Kaneda 400 IPs a year 30 starts 30 relief appearences 25 complete games, but coming in ON THEIR THROW DAYS, to pitch to a couple of batters, maybe to exploit platoon advantage?

The main concerns are obviously
1) HOw effective the starter will be in relief on his relief cameo
2) How much it will affect his scheduled starts
3) How much it will affect his long-term health

Pedro pitching on 4 days rest in 2004 he just wasn't that good, he is a significantly better pitcher with extra rest.

You have to have Schilling throw games 2 and 6 because he couldn't hit and needed extra time between starts.

So you have Pedro start game 3 and 7. Therefore he was available to pitch in game 7 of the ALCS when the Sox had no rested arms in the pen. They had made the decision that he might pitch in game 7 before game 6, that's why Pedro was in Boston seeing a physical therapist that day.

To say they risked losing the most important game in the teams history, and the WS, just to appease a guy they didn't try that hard to sign in the off-season, is insane.

You seem to be pretty sure of this, so certainly you can produce some evidence?

I've heard fans older and wiser than me talk about how the impossible dream Red Sox were the catalyst for the rabid RS fanbase in New England. How without 67 and 75 the team and it's fans would be more like the pre-strike phillies, instead of in a league with the yankees.

That's oversimplifying. Without 1967 through 2005, the Red Sox fan base wouldn't be what it is today. The last time the Red Sox had back-to-back years with fewer than 80 wins in each was 1965-66. 1967 was the start, for sure, but the team hasn't really gone through a significant uncompetitive rebuilding phase in 40 years. Even their worst year in that period (1992) was sandwiched by an 84-win season and an 80-win season. Granted, they're not "really" in contention with an 80-win season; but if you bought a ticket there was almost an even chance that they'd win that day. That goes a long way toward keeping the fan base happy.

The main concerns are obviously
1) HOw effective the starter will be in relief on his relief cameo
2) How much it will affect his scheduled starts
3) How much it will affect his long-term health

Depends on what's expected in a side session. If they're maintaining their usual velocity in a side session, they could be effective doing a relief cameo, AND not affect scheduled starts, AND not affect long-term health. If their side sessions are lower-velocity, lower-stress sessions, putting them an in-game situation could lead them to overdo it, and all three concerns would be affected adversely.

You have to have Schilling throw games 2 and 6 because he couldn't hit and needed extra time between starts.

So you have Pedro start game 3 and 7. Therefore he was available to pitch in game 7 of the ALCS when the Sox had no rested arms in the pen. They had made the decision that he might pitch in game 7 before game 6, that's why Pedro was in Boston seeing a physical therapist that day.

To say they risked losing the most important game in the teams history, and the WS, just to appease a guy they didn't try that hard to sign in the off-season, is insane.

I agree. They planned to use Martinez in game 7 because Foulke had pitched 5 and two-thirds innings over the prior 3 days, and Lowe has not expected to have so many effective innings. (plan was probably something like Lowe innings 1-4, Pedro 5-6, Embree/Timlin/Myers 7-8-9 with Foulke lurking as the wildcard/desperation move).

However once they found themselves getting 6 innings out of Lowe and a 8-1 lead, I think they should have changed the plan. Try to get the final three innings with a patchwork of Myers-Timlin-Embree, neither of whom had pitched the day before. If NY cuts the lead against them to 5 or less, you still have Pedro available. If the lead increases you could eke an inning out of Leskanic or Wakefield. And then Pedro could pitch Game 1.

You have to have Schilling throw games 2 and 6 because he couldn't hit and needed extra time between starts.

So you have Pedro start game 3 and 7. Therefore he was available to pitch in game 7 of the ALCS when the Sox had no rested arms in the pen. They had made the decision that he might pitch in game 7 before game 6, that's why Pedro was in Boston seeing a physical therapist that day.

To say they risked losing the most important game in the teams history, and the WS, just to appease a guy they didn't try that hard to sign in the off-season, is insane.

Bingo. Francona said as much after the ALCS.

I can't believe that a 1-inning relief appearance in the 7th inning with the Sox holding a 7 run lead still causes so much angst. They pitched Pedro because the staff was exhausted (no Foulke available for Game 7), because it was his day to throw, because doing so gave him both an extra day of rest AND allowed him to pitch in warmer St. Louis AND set Schilling up to pitch in Fenway twice AND set Pedro up to pitch a Game 7 in the WS.

He got knocked around a bit. Big deal. All angst over that move should have dissipated 5 seconds after Bellhorn hit the fair pole the very next inning.

I miss Pedro. I agree with the sentiments here that the Sox have hopefully learned their lesson in regards to superstar players; pay to keep them, let the above average ones walk. Maybe they did learn; they let Damon walk but signed Ortiz to an extension.

If you can help it, you dont go into a series with your undeniable top two pitchers slotted in for games 2 and 3. You choose games 1-2 for them.

No angst here. Pedro's my favorite player and this period is the favorite week of my life, so I enjoy breaking down the minutae.

The risks of the Pedro relief move werent dissipated by the Bellhorn HR the next inning (off the fan in left, not the pole in right), they were dissipated the next week when the Sox obliterated any chance of the Cardinals winning the series before Pedro could make his potential 2nd WS start.